Evo Louisville

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Clint. You have a really nice gym!

I would love to see you guys put in some cracks. I find good cracks in gyms, such as what is at EarthTreks or Movement Denver, are very good training for crack lines outside.

Wally

Went by today on my lunch break. I feel like any critiques I have are probably pretty picky. I'll share anyhow. It was nice that there were only a few other people in the whole place but strangely it still felt very claustrophobic. Maybe because of the dark walls.

No first timer discount is pretty lame. I paid $20 to run up and down a few auto-belays and do 2 boulder problems before having to head back to work.

The 2 .10's I did on auto-belay were dramatically different in difficulty in my opinion - kind of strange.

Walltopia walls are rubber shredders for sure but these seemed slightly better than I remember the ones at EarthTreks being...still too rough.

My visit was short but I'll throw out some other thoughts:

1. Get rid of the crappy Red Bull and get some grab-and-go proteins in the cooler
2. It would have been nice to have a staff member go ahead and belay certify me and maybe even lead test me since there was nobody there - Movement does this
3. Please dont make so many starting holds for kids - some of the auto-belay routes felt like a SDS...
4. The Reggae music was cool today but lacking in the boulder area (couldn't hardly hear) - picky I know...
5. The lead walls were taller than I expected - excited to try some leads
6. YOU NEED CRACKS
7. Did I mention how important cracks are?!?!?!

In all fairness - for me - I love Movement and live in East Denver - the new Ubergrippen is 5 minutes from my house and right across the street from my dog's daycare. I mention this because the only way I could justify going to Evo is to pay monthly to get the per visit cost down and with Movement membership costs and probably Ubergrippen I probably wouldn't bother - especially with Evo's $75 EFT setup fee.

I don't know why gyms don't have a punch card for lunchtime hours for people like me and others who want to run in for a quick 35 minute burn and leave.

I am really loving the new gym! It hasn't felt crowded even when I counted almost 100 people in the gym one night. I like the layout and the routes. They do not feel consistently graded yet, but I don't consider that a problem. Several people from my work have joined and we are all happy to have this facility in Louisville.

I went tonight and I have to say, the route setting is really good at Evo Lou. Route setting is the #1 most important thing in a gym for me.

Sounds like things are hoppin' over there already. Great to hear that it's being well received! I'll have to come check it out soon. Meanwhile, Best of luck!

Went this weekend for the grand opening. Clint mentioned that he has kids and wants to make the facility a family friendly place. So far it really shows, the kids area is awesome! In the past my toddler has always hated tagging along to the gym, but this time he loved it. We put him in child care for 1.5hrs, and when we peeked in he has happily playing. Then when we picked him up we let him try out the different kid areas, and he hopped on some rings before climbing the "castle" to the slide. One comment about the slide: most of the younger kids 2-4 (which seemed to be the intended age for the downstairs area) were a bit intimidated by the tunnel slide while older kids 7-10 (who it looks the upstairs is more geared towards anyway) loved the tunnel slide and rudely pushed away the apprehensive little ones. Is it logistically crazy to experiment with a different slide? If experimentation isn't too tough, maybe try a non-tunnel, but not a huge issue anyway. Our little guy even loved the upstairs, though he needed quite a few "boosts". I liked seeing the 5.3 confidence builders. Great work on giving kids a dedicated, fun, and safe area to play in.

As far as gym comments go, I'll just reinforce (or rehash) what the others have said. 

To work on:

- The anchor clips are really annoying. (Also nice to know that skipping first clip is acceptable as it's somewhat worthless.)

- More cubbies. On plus side, if the cubbies are full then there's decent space in front of cubbies without being in way of wall.

- Child care reservations. Someone said that it never fills up so don't worry, but it would be a pain to make plans only to find child care is full.

- Desk staff didn't always communicate so clearly, though maybe that was just a function of the large crowd.

- Only a couple times was I aware of the topropes in the way of lead routes (very minor annoyance IMO), but yeah if that's fixable then all the better.

The good:

- Again, great job with the kids area.

- Good amount of surface area at walls. With a packed grand opening I didn't always get my first pick of climbs, but even having an open climb for my second pick was great considering the amount of people.

- Routesetting was really good.

- Draws were easy to clip, which was nice given the close spacing.

- Nice and clean.

I'll definitely consider a membership at some point (tough time to open with outdoor season well on its way).